AFTER weekend talks, Gaullist President Jacques Chirac and the Socialist Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, decided to defy the German Chancellor and demand big investment in job creation at the Amsterdam summit.
Dr Helmut Kohl left the French German summit in Poitiers on Friday insisting that Bonn would not give in on a special EU financed employment pact to accompany moves towards a single currency. But French determination to break with the traditional Paris Bonn axis over Europe has been strengthened by support for the Socialist prime minister from the right.
Mr Chirac, the chancellor's most reliable ally until the left's general election win two weeks ago, told Dr Kohl that responsibility for government policy over the euro was now in Mr Jospin's hands and that France would speak with a single voice during the summit.
Although Dr Kohl said he would refuse extra funds and new powers for the European Commission, Mr Jospin appears to have persuaded Mr Chirac to back an urgent European investment programme of big public works as a condition for signing the stability pact on budget restrictions on the introduction of the euro. It is generally expected here that Germany will be forced to accept a social programme or put the 1999 monetary union deadline in peril.
Before leaving for the finance ministers' meeting yesterday, the French representative Mr Dominique Strauss Kahn said France would not approve the stability pact if Germany refused the French government's conditions. Mr Jospin's ascendancy over Mr Chirac in the first stages of cohabitation has been helped by disarray on the right.
The clearest public message of support from the right came from the Gaullist former interior minister, Mr Charles Pasqua, once Mr Chirac's closest aide, who openly criticised the Gaullistled former government for not standing up to Bonn. "I don't have much sympathy for Mr Jospin but he has succeeded in forcing the Germans to moderate their intransigence."
Mr Jospin has also been assured of support from other European countries, although Britain's Labour government appears to be sitting on the fence.
The Socialist Party spokesman indicated that the stability pact would have to be changed significantly before France would agree to sign. "If the left had not won the parliamentary elections, the version drawn up in Dublin with Jacques Chirac would have been agreed to at Amsterdam," Mr Francois Hollande added. "Employment, economic growth and social need would not have been at the heart of European construction and we would only have financial decrees."
Without a clear majority in parliament, the Socialists need the support of communists, greens and other allies to endorse Mr Jospin's domestic programme which would include proposals on reducing the 3.1 million jobless rate. Priority will be given to the creation of 700,000 jobs for young people, half in private industry, and the rest in the public sector.
. THE Government should put day to day concerns of ordinary people at the top of its summit agenda in Amsterdam, according to the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. Its general secretary, Mr Peter Cassells, says the future of the EU depends on its ability to create more jobs, to share the fruits of growth more fairly and modernise the European social model.
The new treaty should include a chapter on employment, under which EU governments would have to co-ordinate their policies to tackle unemployment, he said. He called also for a social protocol under which the rights of part time and temporary workers would be improved and a charter of fundamental rights provided for children, pensioners and consumers.